Achromatize
by fiercesunshine
Summary: He knew color, once. Cloud-centric, implied Cleon. For Toothpaste Addict.


**Author's Note:**  
a·chro·ma·tize (ey-**kroh**-m_uh_-tahyz)  
–verb (used with object), -tized, -tiz·ing.  
to make achromatic; deprive or free of color.  
Also, _especially British_, a·chro·ma·tise.

For Toothpaste Addict in the celebration of his birthday, even though it was yesterday. IT DIDN'T TURN OUT ANGRY LOL I LIED.

I had some serious problems coming up with an idea for this prompt, and now I have another idea in addition to this, though it revolves around Denzel and being a social chameleon. This one didn't come out anything like I thought it would, but I actually like it.

**Disclaimer:** I'm fairly certain that I don't own Kingdom Hearts, or Final Fantasy, or Disney, or anything else. You can check if you'd like.

* * *

He knew color, once.

He lost it on the same day he lost _him_.He knows this for a fact – it's one of the few things he knows is true now that everything around him is a lie. He can remember rose-colored turrets and the strange purple-orange of the sunset. Blue cliffs, yellow buildings, and brown hair haunt his memory, teasing him in dreams when he can't remember that he isn't there anymore.

Lately, the only colors he knows aren't colors at all. They're black and white and gray (every shade of gray imaginable), and sometimes Cloud finds it hard to tell them apart. He's in the Underworld now, enslaved to a maniacal god so that he can gain enough power to go _home_, but that comes at a price. Hades is a hard master, and Sephiroth a harder opponent. The Underworld has changed him in more ways than one; he can't even tell what color the claw on his arm is.

It's hardest when he's in the Coliseum itself, fighting Heartless and studying Hercules. Hades wants him dead, and Cloud's vision is so blurry that he can't remember why that might be a bad thing. All he sees when he sleeps is silver, and so he lets himself fight until he's bloody and nearly broken. He has to fight. He has to win.

The world of violence and blood that he's become a part of comes crashing down on him, and all it takes is an oversized mutt and a trio of misfits. He can't kill Hercules, not because of any loyalty to the man, but because he can't kill Sora. _Sora._ An innocent, utterly naïve, inexperienced _child_ who is too stupid to be afraid of a man that tried to _kill him_ in order to kill someone _else_, so that the Lord of the Dead could help him kill _another_ person.

It isn't that Sora is a better swordsman (if you can call the wielder of the Keyblade a swordsman), though he will admit that the kid and his friends are tough. It isn't even that he's so optimistic and filled with light that it hurt Cloud to look at him. It's that his eyes are blue, really _blue_ – the same shade of blue he dreams about, the same shade of blue that he remembers from the canyons and cliffs of the home he'd all but forgotten in his thirst for revenge. They aren't gray-blue, or the blue of Hades; they're _Hollow Bastion_ blue.

He starts to remember the home he was stolen from and the friends he lost. Hades is about ready to send his soul plummeting to the depths of the Styx, but he doesn't care – the god has too much to lose to actually do it, and he knows it. One day, he notices his reflection. His eyes are blue.

It's some time until he sees Sora again. There's another tournament (another fight, another chance, but not to kill – not this time), and Cloud watches the entrants as they arrive, hidden in the shadows of the columns. Sora shows up early to train with Phil, and he watches for a bit, noticing that the drab colors seem a little less gray. A loud yell tears him away, and the swordsman uses the advantage of a wing to find out what's going on.

There's a teenage girl with a shuriken inside the gates. She looks vaguely familiar, he realizes, and so he watches her for a bit, not really listening to what she's saying until the person she's saying it to becomes visible.

Cloud's first thought is like static on a television, and then it switches to the color bars used for testing, painfully bright and vibrant. He's physically clutching his forehead, claw bringing tiny droplets of blood to the surface. It can't be him, because if it's him, then he's forgotten more than he thought.

Cloud goes to register for the tournament, and finds out his partner's name is Leon.

--

He's finding color again.

He's still a killer, and always will be. He's still looking for a way to finish off one man for good, and it's still hard for him to see the world in more than shades of gray. But he's trying; for them, and for him, and maybe even for himself.

How strange that, after all this time, he's finding color in a pair of gunmetal eyes.


End file.
